As the Managing Director of EnvirUP, let me explain why we created the Green Index and my background. With a growing family (my wife and three children aged 8, 7 and 3) we are fair consumers of the major household brands. But I have always struggled to find mainstream brands that help us lead a greener lifestyle. Looking more closely at the weekly shop, I was sometimes horrified by the huge amount of (wasteful) packaging. I found that it was not always clear whether we could recycle the left over packing after use. As a professional environmental consultant, I was not sure whether I was just missing something or others had the same issues. After talking to my colleagues, family and friends I was amazed by the number of stories about how they had been shocked by the amount of packaging, confusion on how green their shopping was or simply not knowing how they would find out more.

At the same time I was reading 'Six Degrees' by Mark Lynas (a superb book and highly recommended) and I just felt there must be something I could do as a 'professional' in the Environmental Sector to make a positive difference towards the future of the planet. The big message that I had pounding in my head was 'stop chasing the fees and start chasing impact'. So I started thinking about redirecting my company's efforts away from the corporate focus, towards helping the consumer to lead a greener life. Equipped with 8 years of diverse environmental work experiences, surely we could do something useful!

The idea I finally settled on was to assess how green the major consumer products are and produce an Index comparing them against each other. My thinking was that, whatever the 'average consumers' knowledge or expertise is regarding environmental analysis, comparing one product they know against another is easy to understand. For the first time, in the UK, we could easily decide for ourselves whether we are willing to purchase a product that is not doing its best for the environment. If I could make it easy for consumers to share their views with the manufacturers, perhaps they would be willing to take bigger steps to improve their environmental performance.

I then looked to see it there was anything similar: I found nothing that could help consumers make more informed choices regarding their shopping. Yes, there were corporate sustainability reviews, awards and indexes. But none of these ever made a difference to my buying habits and seemed too much like corporate 'self appreciation' societies rather than be of any value to the consumer.

Over the past six months we have focused 75% of our time to develop this project and it is taking shape nicely! I decided to carry out a survey to identify what consumers would expect from the green index.

I took the decision not to seek sponsorship, get free samples of products or tell the brand manufacturers what we are doing. I just wanted to remain completely independent so we could not have any outside influence distracting my desire to provide the 'consumer' with the best information possible with our limited resources. If I were to say, this project is taking us close to the edge, it would be an understatement. We could have been working on some corporate work that pays us a fair salary, but we have decided to keep costs down to do this project. I sincerely believe in this project and if that means taking a risk, so be it!

The economy is facing its biggest ever crisis and the current political situation is not helping either. So in an effort to 'walk the talk' I decided at the outset that I would behave in a way that I would like to see the brands behave. I hope this is a valuable and useful study, I am therefore allowing each and every one of our consumers to pay the price that they feel the report is worth to them. I know this may open us up for 'financial abuse' but, we are doing this to respect the planet and hope that our consumers will respect us.

The second element of 'walking the talk' is to pay 20% of the revenue (after transaction costs) we receive from this work to named UK charities. If I am going to assess how other companies are behaving, then I need to ensure that my business is behaving in a sustainable manner. We have been paying 2.5% of our annual profits to charity for many years and I felt that, if this project succeeded, then we should share the benefits with some of those that need it most.

My vision for this project is that every consumer becomes a little better informed about the sustainability or shade of green of some of the UK's top brands. Then they can decide whether to buy them, not just on flavour, function, dietary value but also their impact on the environment. Consumers could also share their views with the brand manufacturers, from the results of the green index, so that the good ones continue to do even more and the 'not so good' work much harder….because their consumers care. Ultimately, if we as consumers don't like the products, we can vote with our hard earned cash!

I am planning for this report to become an annual review, so we can track how the companies are improving or not each year. But the most important element, is that this project empowers the consumer to 'live an easier greener life', to which only you can decide.